I got into town around 6 yesterday after leaving Baton Rouge around 12. It was a relatively easy drive back, better than I thought it would be anyway. They shut down I-10 at Lake Charles so I had to take the loop around it. Everything from between Lafayette and Lake Charles, and Maybe just past Beaumont was ROUGH. Especially around Sulphur to Vidor. I must have seen 50 tree cutting trucks in single file going down I-10 to remove trees from people's living rooms and off of power lines. If you've never been in that area, it's mostly trees such as live oaks, white oaks, loblolly and southern yellow pines. Those trees don't do well in high winds, they just crack and fall on whatever costs the mosts around them. I took some photos of the local devastation around my neighborhood, including the two buildings that burned down 2 blocks from my house, but it was twilight and they probably didn't come out too well.

It was strange that out of every 10 buildings that was demolished, 7 or 8 of them were churches. It looked like someone came by every church and put a bomb under the roof or something. Tractor trailers were flipped over in the median and tin roofing was wrapped around trees. And they closed every off-ramp from Lake Charles to past Beaumont, I guess to prevent people from trying to come back before it was time or somesuch. I'm glad my gas tank was big enough not to need gas along the way. Unfortunately, all the fast food places were closed yesterday around Galveston, so I was stuck eating some food my mother packed in an ice chest for dinner. Better than raiding the pantry, though.

The tapwater smelled funky with lots of chlorine added (to kill the fester that's been brewing in the resevoir I guess), so it smelled like someone had pooped in the pool water. I boiled some of it for 5 minutes (electric kettles are good for this) and gave it to Freya. Then she had diarrhea all over my bedroom floor. goddamn it, I guess that was some normalization for not having my roof collapse. If that's all I get, I'll be complacent with it. My landlord nailed a plywood section (which he took from my pig-cooker) over my balcony door, so I snuck a smoke outside on the porch. I still haven't found out if someone stole my trashcan and punching bag or if he stowed it somewhere, but I'm about to have to dump everything from my fridge and freezer out (there was a green popsicle slime exuding from the freezer door and forming a mucilage on my fridge doorstripping) so I'll be needing a good can for that.

there's only me and the secretary and the lab manager at work today, no boss and nobody else. Figures. 20 bucks to replace my stolen ID card too. But I got to park right up next to the building b/c nobody is on campus today. Dig it.

I was listening to the local talk radio on the way back, one of the people who is on the show owns a gun store in Houston. this guy's a real "2nd amendment to the extreme" type, which I both am glad for (because he helps keep gun owner rights from being dismantled) and am not glad for (because he makes it look like everyone for gun owner rights is a character from GI-JOE). Anyway they were talking about what should be going in your 'bug-out bag' (which I guess is their version of a survival/disaster kit), and I was thinking I'd been wanting to get a coupld of those jerry can steel gas containers put into the truck bed, but with the little brackets to lock it into place, and a bolt-in mount for a 3-foot prybar would be awesome, because (although it sounds strange) I seem to have a use for a crowbar or prybar more often than I used to. If I could find some jerry cans and the holders for them, that would be 3 kinds of awesome for me, since this old 1-gallon can is useful only for filling up the portable lantern and stove, not my gastank.

I've been having some subacute-going on chronic pain with my right thumb carpal joint now, and I've been popping NSAIDs and such to help with the inflammation, but to no avail. I'm going to go to the doc thursday to see about maybe getting something done (hopefully a nice big injection of steroids maybe). Whatever it takes, I can't afford to have inflammation damage to my good hand.

I haven't really inspected the bike well, and I dunno how much if any flooding was involved without taking the exhaust headers off, and then still I won't know any more until I try to start the bike. I'm still like 5 steps away from that so I'm just crossing my fingers until then... Actually my mom was telling me it would be gone, stolen or washed away into the gulf. I told her, first of all it's 700 pounds, it's not going to fly away or anything, and it's strapped to a motorcycle jack, and it's got 3 locks on it, no rear shocks, no seat, no brake fluid, and the battery's disconnected so it's not getting ridden out. And it's got comprehensive coverage so I'm safe anyway. There's trash and tree droppings all around it though so I need to hose it off or something.

It was strange that out of every 10 buildings that was demolished, 7 or 8 of them were churches.

My theory on that is that churches, almost universally, seem to be built with "pretty" in mind, rather than "can withstand a Cat. 3" or whatever. Obviously it's just a bit hard to prepare for a tsunami, but I noticed that particularly in Sri Lanka, it was temples that got hit. Steeples and whatnot just don't seem incredibly structurally sound; that's just my guess.

Supposedly strongly vaulted roofs are supposed to be safer from hurricane winds blowing them around, but I think that's only to a point of size, and once you go much bigger than that you can't (economically) support it enough to hold it down. In the South, churches get a lot of storms, in fact many of them see dozens of hurricanes in their lifetime. I would expect them to be built stronger than ones in the midwest for that reason, but I think maybe the rationale is that it's easier to rebuild a cheap building than to build an expensive one.

Glad to hear you're back in business, more or less. I was hoping you'd be okay when I saw it was going your way. Good luck on the fridge cleaning - I had to do that after Katrina when I had a serious case of Yucky Smelly Fridge.

I dunno what that thing's called, there's a few different companies that make them. I want one of the larger caliber ones, maybe a .410 shotgun or something even. I drew up a design for one several months ago for fun.